4 Famous Movies and Shows That Lied Their Way into Existence

The pitch meeting is what gets all of your favorite things off the ground. In those meetings, creators have to sell their ideas so well that a studio or publisher is then willing to devote tons of money to bringing it to life. In order to convince decision-making executives, sometimes creators fib a little to seal the deal. Other times they tell massive lies to get their way. These are some of those lies.

#4. Lost

ABC Studios

Before Game of Thrones threw way too many characters onto your TV screen, and before American Horror Story was a weekly parade of snake-venom-induced night terrors, there was Lost -- the show that paved the way for a lot of today's genre TV. It was ambitious. It just wasn't pitched that way. Lost was pitched with lie after lie in order to convince ABC executives that the show could be long lasting. What were some of the lies in the 27-page pitch document written by J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof?

ABC Studios"That the show wouldn't be gaaaaaaayyyy!!1" said the sharp-witted IMDb forum poster.

1) The show would not be serialized. "Self-contained. Seriously. We promise," they wrote. "This is not lip service -- we are absolutely committed to this conceit," they continued. -- Ha! Nope.

2) Everything on the show would have a concrete scientific explanation. -- That's iffy as fuck.

3) "There is no 'Ultimate Mystery' which requires solving." -- Take the ultimate mystery out of the plot of Lost and you don't have a plot on Lost.

4) The mystery of the Smoke Monster would be revealed in "the first few episodes." -- It took six seasons.

Lindelof and Abrams didn't know what the show was yet. They say as much themselves on the first page of the document: "The greatest architect in the world can draw up a blueprint for a building, but construction is a whole new ball of wax."

The problem with that metaphor is that ABC asked for the blueprint after they started construction. For starters, the show was rushed to pilot, it was the most expensive pilot episode ever at that point, and it wasn't until the pilot was being filmed that someone at ABC realized that no one had any clue what this show would be like a few seasons down the line, or even by the second episode. ABC execs were afraid the show would end up mired in mythology like Alias was at the time. So Lindelof and Abrams wrote this document to make ABC happy, but never intended to follow it. According to Lindelof, "By the time we started breaking the first two episodes, it was already very clear to everyone in the room that the document that we had written to get the show picked up was going to be completely and totally null and void."

ABC Studios"Run! We'll figure out why later!"

But why were they able to get away with it? Because of the average 15.69 million viewers per episode during the first season. Because the first season won an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. Because from day one, Lost was a cultural phenomenon that happened just as we collectively discovered that we can use the Internet and DVRs to obsess over TV shows. When you're a hit, the backstory of how you got to that point doesn't matter much to network executives; just keep up the impressive ratings and the executives will let you write your magnum opus as they dive headfirst into their Scrooge McDuck swimming pool of gold coins.

#3. The Walking Dead

AMC Studios

When Robert Kirkman first pitched The Walking Dead to Image Comics, executives had mixed feelings about it. It's hard to blame them. People had only ever seen two-hour-long zombie movies that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And now here was this guy pitching a zombie comic book that could potentially go on for decades. They didn't think a series about people wandering a zombie-infested wasteland was enough to keep readers coming back. It needed something ... more.

Euforia FilmZombie ... Nazis?

So Kirkman gave them more, presented in the form of a crazy-as-fuck plot twist: He told Image that, as the series progressed, it would slowly be revealed that the zombie apocalypse was caused by aliens who were using the zombies to weaken humanity's defenses. When mankind was appropriately dismantled, the alien hordes would descend upon Earth and take over, and the story would then be about the battle between humans and aliens.

It was all bullshit. Kirkman made it all up just so he could get the green light. It's like begging your parents to borrow the car so you can go to the school dance, then driving to a strip club.

Triumph FilmsZombie ... strip club?

One of the higher-ups at Image, Jim Valentino, later asked Kirkman about the alien plotline, not catching the hints to it after reading the first issue. Kirkman fessed up and told him that he never intended to put aliens in it. Here's Kirkman paraphrasing Valentino's reaction: "Well, that's good, because I was kind of reading the book, thinking, hey, he might ruin this by putting aliens in it."